Family loses two to crashes
By John Joyce
Published in News on June 9, 2015 1:46 PM
For the second time in six months, a trooper with the state Highway Patrol had to notify a Seven Springs woman that one of her loved ones had been killed in a car crash.
First, her husband. Now, a daughter.
Zoila Mendez, 28, of 2133 Pineview Cemetery Road was killed at 6:20 a.m. Sunday when the car she was driving went off the road and overturned.
"She was traveling west on Pineview Cemetery Road and, for whatever reason, she overcorrected, went left of center and into a small skid or a slide. She then struck a ditch and overturned, and she was ejected," Sgt. Maurice DeValle said.
Ms. Mendez was not wearing her seat belt. She leaves behind two small daughters, DeValle said.
It was DeValle who, on Jan 24, notified Ms. Mendez's mother that her husband, Umberto Domingo Lopez, was killed in a head-on collision on N.C. Highway 111 South.
On Sunday, he knocked on her door again. She recognized him immediately.
"The kids recognized me, too. One of them said, 'Hey, I know you. You're the one who told me my dad was dead,'" DeValle said.
DeValle has children of his own and said performing notifications is one of the toughest parts of his job.
He recalled taking Ms. Mendez's children to the hospital along with her mother, so the body could be identified.
"This little girl, speaking Spanish, kept asking for her mother. She didn't realize her mother was dead," DeValle said. "That was hard."
Investigators do not believe alcohol was a factor in Sunday's crash. Nor do they believe speed contributed to the wreck.
"We just think it was fatigue. She might have fallen asleep," DeValle said.